Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Finally got some fender struts bent the way I wanted. I had an idea in mind, but the finished product never quite looked right to me. First attempts were with 1/2' stock, but it looked too heavy. 3/8 stock seemed to have the right "feel." I eventually got one to house a Biltwell tail light without looking too awkward.

At top is a picture in futility. The four scrapped attempts lined up like errant schoolboys awaiting expulsion.

Monday, August 26, 2013

My feelings about cats is generally ambivalent. I neither love nor hate them. I don't believe they should live in a domestic setting within the home, an excrement laden sandbox has no appeal for me. However, I gotta' give it up to my boy Shopcat VIII. He is a true North Amërïkän Badass. He terrorizes Mudflap the Wonderdog and ambushes all who pass before him from 'neath the juniper bushes, assaulting ankles and fatted calves with abandon. He is a hunter of the highest order and has decimated the once-bloated field mouse population. I've personally witnessed him eat a still-wiggling grasshopper in less than four seconds. He consumes sun-dried frogs and earthworms, crunching them in his mighty jaws.
He walks around with the presence of a Lord and has a disproportionally large scrotal sac which contain the mysteries of feline reproduction and the origin of Ted Nugent's chronic pyrexia.

Thursday, August 22, 2013

One of the cool things about the GP is that all the infield of the track is occupied by tents and booths. All the major motorcycle manufacturers had tents. Got to see some new bikes which will come out in the fall.

An awesome retro Honda. air cooled 1100 four.

Ducati Supermotard. A friend of mine rides one.I want one of these so bad.

Sacrilege.

An electric race bike. Didn't see them run, but they look pretty cool.

Saw this in the Honda tent. It's a 250 and the MSRP is $4999.00 Pretty cool little bike for less than 5K.

Brucie fell hopelessly in love with this Yamaha Tenere. If he wasn't so cheap and was about eight inches taller, he'd have bought it.
With the Warn winch mounted on its tail this bike can pull school buses out of muddy ditches.

Monday, August 19, 2013

Got to Bruce's place in the early hours after gliding across the rural back roads, stoked on Adderall® anticipation and caffeine, atop the trusty Galaxy Traveler.

I intended to photograph some of Bruce's collection of bikes. He has a number of vintage Guzzis, a pretty sweet Shovelhead, some two-stroke Kawi triples and a couple of Ducati's in various states of repair. But they were all under tarps, bed sheets and shit. Some day we'll roll them out of his packed garage and take some pics. He has an obsession for cheap transportation, so he also has a motley assemblage of misfit scooters. He opted to ride his $700.00 (only bike he ever bought new) Chinese scooter, much to my chagrin.
On the road I hung back and acted like I wasn't with him.

We parked on the backstretch of the famed two and a half mile oval. I've had some good times at this place over the past twenty-five years, most of which I can't remember. The second turn grandstands can be seen in the distance. All four corners of The Speedway are blind corners, couldn't imagine taking them at two-hundred plus mph as the Indy Cars do.
You could spend a whole day just checking out the thousands of bikes of the patrons, without even going in to the infield where the real stuff is.

The infield pagoda. Why the Oriental motif, no one knows. This is the fourth since The Speedway's inception. The first one, a flimsy wooden structure burnt down in 1925 when Cosmo Kramer dropped a lit cigar in a waste paper basket.
The very first race run on the Speedway in 1909 was actually a motorcycle race. It was a two lap affair (5 miles) an Indian motorcycle won the day.

Funky V-rod sidecar.

There was a Sportster spec race run on the GP course while we were there. Got to sit in the pits, get pleasantly drunk on $6.00 a can beer, and talk to drivers and mechanics.

All in all a pretty cool day. I used to attend the Indy 500 in the eighties and nineties. Saw the NASCAR boys run once, but it was a snooze fest. The cars looked like they were crawling after years of watching 220 mph on the straightaways for all those years. The GP course is laid out in the infield, using only a short stretch of the main straightaway. The bikes have to come out of a tight turn, roar down the straight and hit another tight turn way sooner than the Indy Cars do, and one rider managed to clock 209 mph! It's awesome to live close to one of the few venues in The States. Watching these bikes is incredible when you can sit close to the track and get a real feel for their speed and power. The riders are badass too.

Saturday, August 17, 2013

Thursday, August 15, 2013

I'm buggin' off work tomorrow, Guzzi-loving Bruce and I are headed down to The Speedway for MotoGP practice day. Hot sun, hot babes, hot bikes. A time for White Trash and Euro Trash to mingle, get drunk, get funky and smoke cigarettes. Get to ride on the famed oval (for a short stretch) real fast and set our kickstands on Indy tarmac.

While traipsing along a county road in Small Town Amërïkä, searching the ditches for aluminum cans and scraps of enlightenment, I encountered The Reaper and The Executioner perched upon a fence, discussing the grisly business of life, death and gourmet roadkill. Like a couple of small town lawyers waiting for a drunk driving case, a custody battle or a personal injury accident, they're drawn to the sight of blood and the pungent smell of radiator fluid on hot asphalt. They scour the back roads searching for hose clamps and the mangled corpses of careless night wanderers.

Death is a usurper, the ethereal absence of life. Death is a portal. Death is a coward. As I approached them they took flight on large, cumbersome wings, their grimacing faces flecked with dried blood.

Monday, August 12, 2013

I've been watching, with fascination, as this truck is being slowly overtaken by weeds and mulberry bushes over several years. I'm sure it will eventually be swallowed up completely by Nature, rust, Big Gub'ment or Fiat, whichever comes first.

The Chrysler Corporation has been bailed out more than a leaky row boat in a thunderstorm.

Thursday, August 8, 2013

I took this picture, at great risk, in the Jerkwater Junction Municipal Park and Recreation Center. This park has been the play place for local children for many decades and is equipped with a sad collection of broken-down playground equipment dating back to the fifties . Under the stately oaks and beechnut trees the ground is littered with hypodermic needles, beer cans, broken teeth and disappointment.

Among the rusted jungle jims, monkey bars and other relics stands a plastic, yellow Merry-go-Round Lion which has withstood years of abuse from generations of white trash children and drunken teenagers. He is bolted to a base of paint-worn tread plate, forlorn and decrepit, gazing out across the dismal park with hollow, vacant eyes, a steel rod driven through his skull in a kind of blunt force lobotomy and polished by untold years of grubby fingers and runny noses.

Things worsened for the lion 1984, when a thirteen year old ruffian kicked the poor, inanimate beast’s left flank with the vengeance of pre-pubescent frustration. The blow shattered his thin, outer shell letting his very essence bleed out on to the dusty ground of Small Town Amërïkä, leaving a hollow, soulless vacuum. So here he sits to this day, like some sad figure in a Greek tragedy, his face weary and tortured. A wretched inmate, trapped forever in existential misery.

What’s up with those eyebrows?

The assembled moms watching their children at play were becoming uneasy with the bearded stranger, sitting on a park bench sipping Nyquil cloaked in a brown paper bag, like some malevolent character from a Jethro Tull tune. I figured my time spent contemplating the plight of this regal carnivorous caricature was up. I returned home to ponder my own existence.

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

After Ry set me straight on my quickie-cheap brake caliper fantasies, my attention returned to fender struts. I Shortened the bar considerably. I think I can live with this.

I'm really stoked about the PB Blaster cap taillight housing.

I interpreted the celestial beam of light coming through the brake rotor as a sign of divine approval. The well-decorated shop 'fridge, bathed in bright transfiguration, beckons me with cold beverage and the promise of life's secrets revealed.

Mudflap the Wonderdog turned away in disgust and refused comment. He finds these matters insignificant and went about the more important business of licking himself and eating cat shit.

Friday, August 2, 2013

I'd love to put a set of PM rear calipers on this bike, but I don't have an extra six-hundred bucks laying around. Screwing around in the shop last night with a set of stock XL calipers and they seemed to nestle into the frame nicely. The stock Sportster caliper uses the swingarm as an anchor. Considering tacking a piece of 1 1/2" channel to the inside of the bottom tail section of the frame. I'll need a shorter axle adjuster as well.

Love to hear from anyone who's done this or something similar and can enlighten me.

Thursday, August 1, 2013

Post-war Amërïkä was a time of wide-eyed optimism, crew cuts and large powerful automobiles, designed not by computers, but by men with an eye towards Art Nouveau craftsmanship and quarter mile drag racing. Idyllic scenes like this were commonplace in the ever-expanding suburbs.

Naugahyde and cat litter were exciting new developments as were fabric softener and training wheels.
Vacuum cleaners were still hand actuated and washing machines were powered by large, coal-fired boilers located deep within the dark industrial underbelly, far below the hustle and bustle of city streets.

A man could still buy a cup of coffee and a large pickle for thirty cents. The coffee was imported from Columbia by handsome, well-groomed pack mules and was always freshly ground. And the pickles, O the pickles! They were plump and tasty, fished out of a giant wooden barrel with a pair of stainless steel tongs by the friendly, neighborhood grocer.

Sadly, the once-thought impenetrable armor started to develop chinks, which went largely unnoticed, as venom began leaking out of Amërïkän universities and institutes of higher learning. Mr. Green Jeans and The Lone Ranger began filling the daytime television airways with hypnotic dogma and cardboard.

There were no dysfunctional families in suburbia because moms would routinely gather in well-groomed backyards for a topless coffee klatch where they would exchange recipes and furtive glances. When the coffee ran low and an awkward lull in conversation occurred, they'd tickle each other with dandelions and playfully shove freshly mowed grass clippings down each others panties.